As God Commands

by Niccolò Ammaniti, translated from the Italian by Jonathan Hunt (Black Cat; $14.95)

“It’s when you’re sleeping that they fuck you over!” Rino, an alcoholic skinhead, warns his thirteen-year-old son Cristiano at the beginning of this gritty, suspenseful novel. The two live in squalor in a small Italian town, their isolation relieved only by Rino’s two friends—Quattro Formaggi, the village idiot, and Danilo, a man desperate and crazed after the loss of his wife and child. When the three men hatch a plot to rob a bank, the plan goes awry, resulting in an act of gruesome violence that leaves Cristiano alone, sorting out the night’s tangled events. Ammaniti builds the tale in tense cinematic cross-cuttings. At first, his characters seem only brutal and repulsive, beasts who are “tired, drained, and reduced,” but the story uncovers their humanity and tenderness. The result is grim but redemptive. ♦